


The Secret

by TurtleTotem



Series: Tumblr Ficlets [15]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Omega, M/M, Miscarriage, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 11:16:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10512663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurtleTotem/pseuds/TurtleTotem
Summary: "It seemed cruel and pointless to seek you out just to tell you… and what was there to tell? It was gone. I never even knew about it until it was gone."On tumblrhere.





	

“I didn’t mean to keep it a secret, exactly,” Charles said, looking fixedly at the chess piece he had dropped, turning it over in his hands. It had broken into two pieces, rattling as they moved. “But we… weren’t speaking. It seemed cruel and pointless to seek you out just to tell you… and what was there to tell? It was gone. I never even knew about it until it was gone.”

The chess piece was a knight, Erik saw, aged ivory fragile in Charles’s restless fingers. He wanted to dash it out of Charles’s hands, demand that Charles look him in the eye.

“You said you couldn’t get pregnant,” he said instead.

“Yes, well, that’s certainly what I’d been told.” Charles’s laugh was bitter, his hand clenching around the broken knight. “I suppose my childhood doctor would call it a miracle.”

Their miracle. And Erik had killed it, along with everything else that might have been between himself and Charles, when he deflected a bullet without bothering to look where it went.

After a long silence, Charles finally lifted his gaze to Erik’s. “Are you angry?” The question meant he was too afraid to check Erik’s mind for himself.

Of course Erik was angry. But not at Charles. At himself, for being so careless – over and over, careless. He should have insisted on using protection. He should never have gone to bed with Charles at all, should never have thought they could casually enjoy Charles’s heat together without getting attached. That had been the most mistaken assumption of his entire life.

Seeming to take Erik’s silence as an affirmative, Charles gave a wistful, broken sort of smile, and looked away to set the pieces of the knight on the table.

There was a moment slipping away from him right now, Erik could feel it. An opportunity for – reparation, redemption,  _something_. He didn’t know what words would let him take it.

He reached for the chess piece instead, summoned a paperclip from the nearby desk, and for several minutes bent his entire attention to reforming it, sliding tendrils of metal into and around the knight, until it was held together again, messy but whole.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, pressing it into Charles’s hand. “For everything. I’m sorry you were alone.” Grieving alone, with no one at all to share the burden, would surely have been the worst part.

He had not released Charles’s hand. He raised it now to his lips, holding Charles’s gaze, willing him to hear the words he didn’t know how to say. That he didn’t have to be alone now.

Charles, eyes lighting with some cautious, long-forgotten hope, brushed his hand along Erik’s jawline, and pulled him forward into a kiss.


End file.
